The coal-fired Big Sandy Power Plant in Kentucky, which is one of the states where energy issues are expected to loom large in the 2014 elections.Credit
Shawn Poynter for The New York Times

When President Obama announced strong measures to combat climate change last week, environmentalists who felt he had long soft-pedaled the issue for political reasons rejoiced.

But many Republicans were just as gleeful — in the belief they had been handed a powerful issue to use against Democrats in the 2014 midterm elections in energy-rich states from Texas to Minnesota.

Elected officials and political analysts said the president’s crackdown on coal, the leading source of industrial greenhouse gases, could have consequences for Senate seats being vacated by retiring Democrats in West Virginia and South Dakota, for shaky Democratic incumbents like Mary L. Landrieu of energy-rich Louisiana, and for the Democratic challenger of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.

In ordering limits for the first time on carbon dioxide emissions from up-and-running power plants, Mr. Obama jabbed that opponents belonged to “the Flat Earth Society.” But in coal country, it was Mr. Obama who was called out of touch, with predictions of job losses and spiking energy bills.

Republicans immediately went on the attack against Democratic House members in mining states, posting Web ads with a 2008 sound bite of Mr. Obama predicting regulating carbon emissions would cause electricity prices to “necessarily skyrocket.”

Asked about the impact of the president’s actions on his own re-election prospects next year, Representative Nick J. Rahall II, Democrat of West Virginia, said, “They don’t help.”

Photo

Asked about the impact of President Obama’s actions on his own re-election prospects next year, Representative Nick J. Rahall II, Democrat of West Virginia, said, “They don’t help.”Credit
Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

In Kentucky, Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic secretary of state, announced on Monday that she would take on Mr. McConnell in 2014, and was immediately attacked by national Republicans as being joined at the hip to the president in a “desire to destroy the coal industry.” Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, noted that Mr. Obama had rarely mentioned global warming during his re-election campaign because “he had to carry Ohio — that’s a coal state.”

“Now, he has no more elections to win, and he can play his real cards,” Mr. Cross said. “He was already the most anti-coal president we’ve ever had, and now he’s doubled down. That is not good for Kentucky Democrats in any shape, form or fashion.”

In states rich in energy resources, which have turned increasingly red in recent years, the Democrats who survived have often done so by declaring independence from the national party.

Joe Manchin III, a Democratic former governor of West Virginia, won a Senate seat in the midst of the Tea Party wave of 2010 by attacking gun control and environmental regulations. In a celebrated campaign ad, he aimed a rifle shot at a copy of the president’s 2009 cap-and-trade bill, which was designed to reduce carbon emissions, before Senate Republicans killed it.

Mr. Rahall moved quickly last week to distance himself from the president, sounding nearly as hostile as the billboards dotting coal country bought by mining interests that declare “Obama’s No Jobs Zone.”

He said he was “profoundly disappointed” by the president’s new initiative. “I’m not ever, ever, ever going to back away from fighting for our coal miners,” he said.

Ty Matsdorf, director of the Senate Majority PAC, which supports Democratic candidates but does not donate to them directly, said each one would run a race tailored to state issues.

Photo

Representative Rick Nolan, Democrat of Minnesota, has been targeted on the issue.Credit
Jim Mone/Associated Press

“If they’re going to have to diverge with the president at times, they will,” he said.

Republicans countered that on this issue Democrats can run but they cannot hide. The president’s climate initiative “is a problem for every Democrat,” said Representative Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, who is seeking the Senate seat next year that has opened with the retirement of John D. Rockefeller IV, a Democrat. “You are, for better or worse, a part of the party that you put your name on the ballot with.”

Liesl Hickey, executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Democrats in energy-rich states “should take a long look at former Congressman Ben Chandler.”

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Mr. Chandler is a Kentucky Democrat who was first elected in 2004. Last year, he was aggressively pegged as anti-coal by a Republican challenger, Andy Barr, who ran an ad with a man in miner’s gear calling Mr. Chandler a “low life.”

Even though his district, centered on Lexington, contains no working coal mines, “there’s a cultural affinity for coal” in Kentucky, Mr. Chandler said. “Barr made it a huge part of his campaign.”

“It was a campaign to cause people to believe the president was waging a war on them,” he said. Mr. Chandler lost the election.

Despite repeated accusations that the Obama administration uses environmental regulations to wage a “war on coal,” the steep decline in mining jobs in recent years has also been driven by powerful market forces — mechanization of mining and the conversion of coal-fired plants to cheaper natural gas.

With fewer jobs, mine workers, who once fiercely battled owners, have aligned their interests with the industry, and rural regions from Arkansas to Pennsylvania with a history of supporting Democrats now send Republicans to Washington.

Photo

Last year, Ben Chandler, then a Democratic representative of Kentucky, was aggressively pegged as anti-coal by a Republican challenger. Mr. Chandler lost the election.

Credit
James Crisp/Associated Press

“It’s culture, it’s not economics,” said Representative John Yarmuth, Democrat of Kentucky. “When you do something that is not in the interest of coal, then some people perceive that as attacking the entire Eastern Kentucky culture.”

With no hope of prodding Congress on climate change, Mr. Obama said last week that he would use his executive powers to enact rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020, compared with 2005.

His order stems from a 2007 decision by the Supreme Court that directed the Environmental Protection Agency to rule whether carbon dioxide was a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. In 2009, the E.P.A. said that it was. Last week, speaking at Georgetown University, Mr. Obama told the agency to complete rules for new power plants by the end of September and for existing plants in one year.

Environmental groups applauded the initiatives even as one report said 37,000 jobs at coal-fired plants were threatened.

Ms. Hickey of the Republican Congressional committee predicted 2014 would be a reprise of the 2010 midterm elections, when Republicans racked up huge gains in the House by attacking the president’s health care overhaul and failed cap-and-trade plan.

But the group, which supports electing Republicans to the House from around the country, identified only seven Democratic incumbents to target in Web attack ads on the issue. They included Mr. Rahall of West Virginia, Pete Gallego of Texas and two representatives from rural Minnesota districts, Rick Nolan and Collin C. Peterson.

The reality of the political map is that there are already very few House seats in Democratic hands in energy-rich states. David Axelrod, the president’s longtime strategist, said that whatever price Democrats paid would be small in the context of an energy picture in which oil imports have declined sharply and a natural gas boom has lowered overall energy costs.

“I would argue that ultimately the politics of regulating harmful emissions is pretty good,” he said.

Correction: July 9, 2013

A caption with an earlier version of this article misstated the area represented by Representative Rick Nolan. He represents a district in northeast Minnesota, not Minneapolis.

A version of this article appears in print on July 2, 2013, on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: G.O.P. Sees Opportunity for Election Gains in Obama’s Climate Change Policy. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe